WoW Source: Patch 5.4 Developer Round Table
Blizzard released a video that gives an overview of Patch 5.4 and then answers some of your questions.

Over 50% of Flex Raids last week had 2 or more raid sizes, so people are really making use of the flexible size feature.

Roughly the same amount of people did a flex raid last week as the number that did scenarios.

The Timeless Isle is somewhat of a template for endgame world content going forward. There might be some more structure in the future, but the general style of content that avoids pure daily quests worked well.

Adding things in the world to discover while leveling will also be a goal moving forward.

As far as storage space goes, choosing what to keep is part of the gameplay. No matter how much bag space players are given, it will always end up being full.

Heirlooms are taking up a lot of space, so a centralized storage like the one used for pets and mounts is being worked on. The toy items added in Mists of Pandaria also take up a lot of space, so a similar solution for that would also be ideal.

Siege of Orgrimmar is one of the more melee friendly raid zones that have been added recently. The devs are looking for things melee players can excel at or perks they can have without taking tools away from ranged players.

The Gnome race didn't exist when the original WoW cinematic was being worked on, which is why they didn't appear in it. There hasn't been a good opportunity to showcase gnomes in a cinematic since then.

Patch 5.4.1 will add a new Refer a Friend system. The whole process will be moved in game, rather than requiring you to visit the site in your browser. The system will give you a token which you can redeem for the new mount, one of the other mounts, or a pet.

Blizzcon will have "an exciting glimpse into the future of WoW", as well as a live raid.

Corrected an issue with Cloak and Dagger that could allow Rogues to bypass some targeting and line-of-sight restrictions.

Creatures

Evermaw's spawn is no longer tied to Dread Ship Vazuvius.

Moonfang should now always drop something when defeated.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

Siege of Orgrimmar

Spoils of Pandaria

Corrected an issue where Spark of Life had more health than intended on Flexible difficulty.

Garrosh Hellscream

Garrosh Hellscream should no longer use Malice against players who have an Iron Star fixated on them on Heroic difficulty.

Rated Battleground Ratings Adjustments

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

As you may be aware, we recently made a change to Rated Battleground queues that makes players wait until the match has ended to queue for a new Rated Battleground, even if they had left that match. This change allowed us to close a loophole some were using to artificially inflate their ratings, but unfortunately quite a bit of abuse had already occurred by the time we implemented the fix. Our goal now is to restore as much integrity to the Rated Battleground ladders as possible, and we’ll be doing that in two key ways.

During our next maintenance we’ll be lowering all Rated Battleground personal and matchmaking ratings for those above 2200 down to 2200. The abuse was widespread to a point that many legitimate players’ ratings have been inflated just because they’ve played against those who had used the loophole to boost their rating, and so we need to get everyone back to some equal footing. But secondly we’ll be taking action against the accounts for those who knowingly and purposely abused the exploit to boost their rating, which will result in more than just their rating being reduced.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on things, and looking to take swift action for any further issues.

The Crowd Chose You Buff

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We're not really happy with how The Crowd Chose You is working out at the moment. We're exploring a few options for exactly what we'd like to do, but we will be changing it.

what's the PTR for?
I also totally get the concern that these sorts of changes should be happening on PTR and not live. In an ideal world, they would be. Thing is, the PTR is such a different environment, especially for PvP, that we really don't see the same sort of player behaviors on the test realms that we do on live. There's a lot fewer players, and those that do test aren't worried about getting high ratings as much as they are just trying out new changes.

That makes sense, and we don't really expect players to behave any differently than they do. It just means that, sometimes, issues that crop up on PTR don't extend to live. In this case, we saw the issues cropping up on PTR, but there was a reasonable case to be made that those behaviors wouldn't work on a live environment, where players would care more about their ratings, or the higher pool of players would mean those tactics weren't as successful as often. So, we decided to give The Crowd Chose You a shot, while also starting to think about what we could do if the issues persisted.

In hindsight, sure, it would have been better if we'd done something else to begin with, instead of making the change a couple weeks into the PvP season. Ultimately, we made a bad call, which is why we're working to make some changes now. Just be aware that making those calls isn't as simple as looking at how things are on the PTR. It can be pretty difficult to decide who to listen to sometimes.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Soul Link + Unending Resolve glyph.
There's a huge difference between giving up major defensive cooldowns for a passive effect and just having a passive effect on top of everything else.

In the case the OP laid out, the Warlock is effectively sacrificing two major cooldowns: Unending Resolve, and either Demonic Sacrifice or Dark Bargain. That's a pretty hefty price to pay, and though it certainly seems to be a popular choice at the moment (and we can discuss whether or not it's too strong), it's still a choice. We like choices. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warcraft StoryMy point is that I feel like for WoW to get exciting again we need a new storyline, new heroes and new villians that we can all love and hate.
This is not the first time I have been reading a comment like this, and it is one that I personally find to very interesting due to the vastness that is the Warcraft lore... There are so many different storylines in the Warcraft universe, some obviously more known than others, but which ones would be the most interesting ones for the future?

It could be cool if you guys would share some specifics on what you have in mind when you say that you want a new storyline... are you talking about a continuation of existing storylines, or a restart of the Warcraft storyline overall? Also, do you have a particular storyline you would find more interesting than others?

Some people have already answered questions like these in the story forum, sometimes quite extensively, but in this thread I think a few lines will suffice. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Note to Blizzard, if you're going to hire somebody to interview your crew, just ask Lore to do it.. he has the experience and it won't sound like they are addressing to a crew of people who have no idea what they are talking about.

I liked that you could get those lesser charms quickly by simply killing mobs.

Sadly, it wasn't like that at MoP release and that nearly made me gouge my eye out.

Problem was that you could only get from dailies + you needed a stupid amount of them (90).

Now you can get a lot from just killing (or doing pet dailies wich gives you way more than normal dailies) and also only need 50.

If we just needed 50 at MoP release, they wouldn't need to put it on mob loot.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Granyala

I don't know if the woman in the video works for Curse or not.

In the odd chance that she does, could you please tell her that it's very rude to constantly interrupt the developers during the interview?

I'm not watching the video to hear her voice, I want to know what the DEVs have to say, so tell her to shut up and let the other guy express his thoughts!

Indeed, +1 to you. It's an interview, not "her show".

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by markos82

No its means that its not that hard. On many boss fights in SoO melee just needs to stand and watch out. But ppl are crying since then need to move on Shamans fight.... Why not make all bosses like a dummy and we win...

Go throw a bunch of melee no Thok and see your raid DPS diving...

Really, it's not hard to understand that. It's melee "friendly", but not optimal.

You would prefer to take a ranged DPS over melee DPS for most fights. Why would you think that's better to take a melee for Thok for example?

The tank itself can basicaly kill the add. Rangeds can even remove the enrage from him while quickly dpsing it and changing back to Thok.

Ok, some melee can disarm the mob, yay great! No go chase the big boss that moves faster than you and you have a high chance of being one-shoted by him while doing laughable dps trying to not get killed. Lol.

Dark Clusterfuck Shamans... not even comment.

Funny fact, running around trying to dps something is the only time I probably see my melee character while in "action". Other than that is just a ranged spelleffect showdown... lol.

And ppl claiming that "melee used to do that before, you know" should remember that ranged dps also had to run a lot (and couldn't keep dpsing the boss since most of a caster dps was... lol, casting) and bosses used to try to kill ranged players at the same time they tried to kill melee players.

Now Blizz solution is to remove melee from possible targets of boss abilities... instead of a better balanced design + removing the spelleffect clustercrap so melee can actually be required to see something.

Also can't understand why Blizzard just don't copy what other games do for storage problem.

SWTOR for instance, you have a tab in you bag for quest itens. They also don't throw a bunch of vanity itens like Blizzard did in MoP anyways. They "heirloom" goes to a kind of BoA catalog where you just select the piece of gear and copy it to your bag to use. After you don't need it anymore, you just delete it, but it will stay there in the catalog if you need (just do the same thing again, select and you'll receive a BoP copy of it in your bag). When you buy a heirloom, you're just unlocking it on your colection catalog for your account. Done.

Really, it's not hard to understand that. It's melee "friendly", but not optimal.

You would prefer to take a ranged DPS over melee DPS for most fights. Why would you think that's better to take a melee for Thok for example?

The tank itself can basicaly kill the add. Rangeds can even remove the enrage from him while quickly dpsing it and changing back to Thok.

Ok, some melee can disarm the mob, yay great! No go chase the big boss that moves faster than you and you have a high chance of being one-shoted by him while doing laughable dps trying to not get killed. Lol.

Dark Clusterfuck Shamans... not even comment.

Funny fact, running around trying to dps something is the only time I probably see my melee character while in "action". Other than that is just a ranged spelleffect showdown... lol.

And ppl claiming that "melee used to do that before, you know" should remember that ranged dps also had to run a lot (and couldn't keep dpsing the boss since most of a caster dps was... lol, casting) and bosses used to try to kill ranged players at the same time they tried to kill melee players.

Now Blizz solution is to remove melee from possible targets of boss abilities... instead of a better balanced design + removing the spelleffect clustercrap so melee can actually be required to see something.

Dps will dive only during "chase" phsee. Do you think I like it when his interrupts are so fast i can only cast an instant cast spell like MF or SF. Yey simply amazing. Melee can dps him duging chase phase without any problem, only on last "chase" run when he get really fast they should be away from it.. And still he goes down fast...
Yes tank can kill the add on 10man fast, on 25man he cant... But melee can still dps boss....

Thok is only one boss with that mechanic. Immerseus is standing still, Protectors, you only need to keep Rook not facing the raid ( melee ) and its EZ, Sha, omg i need to go and free ppl in prison? How is that against melee? General, omg i need to help on adds, why oh why do i need to do that, when i can just stand still and dps boss. Norushan, oh i need to help on adds, again I cant just dps the boss...And so on....

Shamans? Ok lets see about ranged point of view. Omg I need to move from shit on the ground, omg i need to dps the adds, omg I need to CC the adds so they dont hit melee, omg I need to watch out from Meteor or what ever it is, omg I need to move from " tornado ". Melee just needs to follow tank, and tanks job is not to move boss in the wrong direction. Hell I OS as guardian and I tanked it, as "melee" i didnt found any issue with it....

Not on any normal fight melee has to move in order to kill add. Garrosh 1st phase is melee friendly, you only need to watch and dont get hit by the wheel. range can kill the weapons, and you can aoe the adds like crazy. I should be crying that as ranged i need to run from side to side and kill engineer, losing like 25sec-30sec doing nothing.

But no, what ppl fail to realize is that a guild run isn't, omg look at my high dps, its not meant do boost your low self esteem but hitting high dps and being 1st on WoL. Its about only one thing, killing the boss as a group of 10 or 25ppl. When ppl realize that it would make your life more EZ...

Dps will dive only during "chase" phsee. Do you think I like it when his interrupts are so fast i can only cast an instant cast spell like MF or SF. Yey simply amazing. Melee can dps him duging chase phase without any problem, only on last "chase" run when he get really fast they should be away from it.. And still he goes down fast...
Yes tank can kill the add on 10man fast, on 25man he cant... But melee can still dps boss....

Thok is only one boss with that mechanic. Immerseus is standing still, Protectors, you only need to keep Rook not facing the raid ( melee ) and its EZ, Sha, omg i need to go and free ppl in prison? How is that against melee? General, omg i need to help on adds, why oh why do i need to do that, when i can just stand still and dps boss. Norushan, oh i need to help on adds, again I cant just dps the boss...And so on....

Shamans? Ok lets see about ranged point of view. Omg I need to move from shit on the ground, omg i need to dps the adds, omg I need to CC the adds so they dont hit melee, omg I need to watch out from Meteor or what ever it is, omg I need to move from " tornado ". Melee just needs to follow tank, and tanks job is not to move boss in the wrong direction. Hell I OS as guardian and I tanked it, as "melee" i didnt found any issue with it....

Not on any normal fight melee has to move in order to kill add. Garrosh 1st phase is melee friendly, you only need to watch and dont get hit by the wheel. range can kill the weapons, and you can aoe the adds like crazy. I should be crying that as ranged i need to run from side to side and kill engineer, losing like 25sec-30sec doing nothing.

But no, what ppl fail to realize is that a guild run isn't, omg look at my high dps, its not meant do boost your low self esteem but hitting high dps and being 1st on WoL. Its about only one thing, killing the boss as a group of 10 or 25ppl. When ppl realize that it would make your life more EZ...

So you don't have devotion aura to keep you from being interrupted (at high stacks anyway, and you still have instant casts to use, the same way melees have high dmg spamable ranged skills and... oh wait...), but you stay way more in chase phase than that in terms of dps. So no, it's not optimal to bring melee to it. 25 is 25, you'll have melee anyways it's a lot of raid spots anyway, plenty of ranged to cover for loss of raid dps from melee.

You can name plenty of problems for melee in fights, but can't name a lot of it for ranged... "omg, at high stacks I can't cast my entire arsenal of spells, only the instant ones", but can unload on Thok "like a boss" while it runs, even when you're the one being chased, since he is far away from you alread "Rá! eat my heroic throws Thok! hahaha!".

"Immersius is easy for melee" and is also for ranged... see the pattern? There isn't a fight where you would prefer to bring the highest possible number of melee dpsers. It's not about changing a target in norushen, or removing someone from a prison in sha (how is that even a problem for ranged?). The fact is that there is nothing in the raid to shutdown a ranged dps as there is for melee. The simple fact that a spellcaster have the option to use instant casts for a still decent amount of dmg destroys it for melee. Melee do not have decent dmg ranged skills to cover for it like ranged does. Even a frost DK can't spam howling blast, altough it is a decent ranged dmg attack (for DW spec), it's just ONE spec from a melee class. If all melee classes/specs had a "howling blast", we could work from there, but no.

Remember when hunters used to have a minimum range? That could be the "melee moment" for them on fights like malkorok and other bosses that you need to stack in melee. But again, only one class would get it...

See? Its about the best use for your dps raid spots, not "ah, we can carry a melee". Can't deny this fact. Blizzard is talking about "it's possible to do", "in a certain moment you'll be able to carry a few more", etc... but I can also do that with my mage friend that does 100k or less dps, he's a bad player, but it's a really good friend that when we can, we carry him, so he can experience stuff, get a mount, etc.

You even did "my job" by saying how stupid is to bring melee to dark shamans... you have the extra job to keep them safe because they just can't do it themselves since the adds will just blow them up. You have to put them chasing one of the bosses (hey, do you remember that their HP is shared, so a ranged can attack both at the same time while the melee can't unless you keep both stacked all the fight???? Much better for the entire raid...) while protecting them and doing better dps. It's not that they don't have to move to kill an add, you don't WANT them to move to do it and perform even worse (and you don't need to move from side to side to kill one engineer for Garrosh fight). You're saying it all out: "MELEE SUCKS".

And no, it's not about WoL, melee dps is part of your raid dps, you need all your dps perfoming well to bring that boss down. Worse on 10man. You can cut that slack in flex, but not in normal/heroic. That's the problem.

Heirloom and Toy storage is nice, still waiting for a tabard tab though. Also, a feature like the armoury chest from FFXIV would be most welcome (especially on my Paladin and probably even moreso on a Druid).

Toy storage has gone to critical mass in MoP. Heirlooms aren't nearly as big a deal, because I can store them on my banking toon.

The Gnome race didn't exist when the original WoW cinematic was being worked on, which is why they didn't appear in it. There hasn't been a good opportunity to showcase gnomes in a cinematic since then.

Calling it here. Gnomes will be seen gratuitously in the next expansion cinematic. Or the Warcraft movie will ONLY be about the gnomes.

So you don't have devotion aura to keep you from being interrupted (at high stacks anyway, and you still have instant casts to use, the same way melees have high dmg spamable ranged skills and... oh wait...), but you stay way more in chase phase than that in terms of dps. So no, it's not optimal to bring melee to it. 25 is 25, you'll have melee anyways it's a lot of raid spots anyway, plenty of ranged to cover for loss of raid dps from melee.

You can name plenty of problems for melee in fights, but can't name a lot of it for ranged... "omg, at high stacks I can't cast my entire arsenal of spells, only the instant ones", but can unload on Thok "like a boss" while it runs, even when you're the one being chased, since he is far away from you alread "Rá! eat my heroic throws Thok! hahaha!".

"Immersius is easy for melee" and is also for ranged... see the pattern? There isn't a fight where you would prefer to bring the highest possible number of melee dpsers. It's not about changing a target in norushen, or removing someone from a prison in sha (how is that even a problem for ranged?). The fact is that there is nothing in the raid to shutdown a ranged dps as there is for melee. The simple fact that a spellcaster have the option to use instant casts for a still decent amount of dmg destroys it for melee. Melee do not have decent dmg ranged skills to cover for it like ranged does. Even a frost DK can't spam howling blast, altough it is a decent ranged dmg attack (for DW spec), it's just ONE spec from a melee class. If all melee classes/specs had a "howling blast", we could work from there, but no.

Remember when hunters used to have a minimum range? That could be the "melee moment" for them on fights like malkorok and other bosses that you need to stack in melee. But again, only one class would get it...

See? Its about the best use for your dps raid spots, not "ah, we can carry a melee". Can't deny this fact. Blizzard is talking about "it's possible to do", "in a certain moment you'll be able to carry a few more", etc... but I can also do that with my mage friend that does 100k or less dps, he's a bad player, but it's a really good friend that when we can, we carry him, so he can experience stuff, get a mount, etc.

You even did "my job" by saying how stupid is to bring melee to dark shamans... you have the extra job to keep them safe because they just can't do it themselves since the adds will just blow them up. You have to put them chasing one of the bosses (hey, do you remember that their HP is shared, so a ranged can attack both at the same time while the melee can't???? Much better for the entire raid...) while protecting them and doing better dps. It's not that they don't have to move to kill an add, you don't WANT them to move to do it and perform even worse (and you don't need to move from side to side to kill one engineer for Garrosh fight). You're saying it all out: "MELEE SUCKS".

And no, it's not about WoL, melee dps is part of your raid dps, you need all your dps perfoming well to bring that boss down. Worse on 10man. You can cut that slack in flex, but not in normal/heroic. That's the problem.

I get my low lasting uninterrupt form symb with lock.. But that has a long CD and it can be used 2 times or less depending how fast you are on killing the boss. Chase phase doesn't have to be long, if yo kill the add and free mobs in prison faster. If you look at the WoL you would notice that only few range classes are on top, same with melee so one can say its not desing for his class/spec...

name few. So far only the Thok is an issue due to running. shamans are not the problem in any way since you move with tanks. There is no reason to push your dps and rick being killed because you wanna cleave both, 100% of the fight duration.

Look at the WoL, its a mix of ranged/melee depending on a boss fight. And then you can also say, omg why is that lock doing 2x dps then my mage. So not fair...

How can prisons be a prob. In 10man there are 2. One can be done with MT and OT without any problem and one closest to where the add spaws can be done with one melee who will have to move for like 1 sec and a you can even put a healer if he isnt inside prison. On 10man it takes 2-3sec or less to free person inside.... shouldnt take more then 3-4 in 25man considering you can use warlock portals..

Yes and that is the reason why i never played hunter. But do you remember the time when range had to stand in order to cast spells? Oh we still do. Remember the time when ranged had to cancel casting in order to move from a puddle that just spawned under them, like on Immerseus, while melee can move and do same dmg?

Adds dont need to reach any melee if the tank not tanking Shaman making them moves. Having 3 ranged ( hunter, moonkin and lock ) if they are grouped, adds will die in 4-5sec max. So there is no need to risk it and keep both Shamans so close, at least not on normal... They are not grouped only for few seconds during that time range is killing adds. When they are grouped melee can again just cleave and dps both...

I think its interesting that despite SoO being "melee friendly" most well progressed heroic guilds sit melee besides rogues and DKs.

Method had a WW monk on all their Heroic kills, and if not all certainly had him on Heroic Garrosh.

I don't have much trouble on mine either, as SEF is pretty useful for a lot of fights. Naz I can attack the whirlwind guys, boss and attack a shaman myself. On Thok I can clone on the boss and attack jailors. We have rolls, Flying serpent kick and Trans to move around, good CD's to avoid damage, decent DPS, the only thing holding us back from being the top melee pick is no real raid utilities.

Apparently what qualifies as 'melee friendly' is different in the Blizzard offices and what players think.

Melee friendly != you standing behind the boss and tunneling them.

Exactly. Like the guy above who listed changing targets and AOE as mechanics that favored ranged.

Dark Shaman are the only boss where I noticed a really annoying mechanism for melee. And how can you list Galak??? geez, the major boss mechanism basically forces you to stack in the tail of the boss and do nothing but DPS.

Maybe they just aren´t aware that ranged also have mechanisms to deal with?

"Patch 5.4.1 will add a new Refer a Friend system. The whole process will be moved in game, rather than requiring you to visit the site in your browser. The system will give you a token which you can redeem for the new mount, one of the other mounts, or a pet."

Oh, Lord and savior C'thulu, is it true? Will I finally be able to get that fucking Zevhra? *squeels like a little girl*

I hope they are kidding. I much more prefer 5.1 daily-lore-style patch then timeless-boredom isle. Instead of any lore (why is Emperor spirit there? Why does he hate Yungol? Who is Ordos anyway? - yes, I can read about it on wowpedia, etc, but there should be lore in-game) they presented us with hours of brainless grind with one-shoting mobs.

I admit, I was not a great fan of Isle of Thunder dailies or Dominance Offensive ones but I much more preferred to do them then to kill the same mobs over and over and over again for countless of hours for no particular reason other then that they give "rep" with Yungol hating old emperor ghost.

I mean, I prefer actual content then sandbox zone where your only goal is to kill anything in sight.

Once I'm done with emperor rep I will never go back there ever again. Simply because the boredom beats other (non-raid wise) mop patches ten times or even more. I really hope they'll rethink their statement.

One of the problem with the devs is they don´t take criticism well. This is definitely a case of them throwing out the baby with the bathwater. 5.0 dailies sucked.. but not really that.. Golden Lotus sucked.. Some of the others (CS, AC, Tillers) were fun. 5.1 dailies were fine. Thunder Isle dailies were fine. So basically the devs really screwed up a lot of little things with Golden Lotus.. there was a lot of negative feedback ( mainly about Golden Lotus)..and now their conclusiion is that playes hate any dailies.

There are some cool things on Timeless island, but mostly it is just running in a big circle trying to catch rares as soon as they spawn. I think the 5.1 content was more fun overall. Instead of the devs just throwing away dailies, they should go back and really analyze all the little mistakes they made with Golden Lotus.. There are a bunch of little things that all contributed to the player outrage about dailies in 5.0 that could all be easily fixed. (and most were in 5.1 and later).